Men as Allies Award

With men holding the majority of roles within engineering and applied sciences, it is crucial that they are involved making the cultural changes needed to attract and retain women in engineering and applied sciences. The Men as Allies Award, launched in 2017, seeks to celebrate a male engineer, or professional male working within the engineering, technical and applied sciences sectors, who has gone above the call of duty to support his female colleagues and address the gender imbalance within engineering and applied sciences.

Stephen Reid is the 2018 winner of the Men as Allies Award. Stephen has delivered training to many women, teaching them how to code as part of the HerCapital program and in a bootcamp where 100% of the 50 women said they would consider a career in tech. Stephen has taught a masterclass on How to think like an Engineer and created and taught a workshop for Witty Careers, an organisation that supports women to get into tech. Betty Bonnardel-Azzarelli, Chair of the judging panel said “With the great quality of applications received for the Men as Allies award, judges have found it difficult to pick only one winner, but Stephen Reid was consistently named as one of the top contenders by all judges. In addition to his day job, Stephen has been teaching computing to women with charities, and has also contributed to leading research on the prevalence of bias in machine learning.”

Previous winner

The 2017 winner was Dr Will Whittow, Senior Lecturer in Electronic Material Integration, University of Loughborough

Sarah Peers, Vice President of WES and chair of the judging panel said “Our first ever Men As Allies award winner is the tweeter-par-excellence Will Whittow, lecturer at Loughborough University. He not only impressed us with his advocacy of women in engineering and the reach he has achieved, but he inspired not only one but four separate nominations!”

Will Whittow said“I’m genuinely delighted and honoured to win this award. There are so many incredible people who work tirelessly to promote women in engineering. Engineers will imagine, engineer and develop the next generation of Intelligent transport and manufacturing; advanced communications; healthcare for an ageing population; renewable energy for the planet; robotics for virtually everything; and so much more. Engineering is everything and for everyone. We need to inspire all the talent to engineer a better world.”